No matter how brilliant an action, it should not be considered great unless it was the result of a great motive.

We forgive just so long as we love.

Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

We often persuade ourselves to love people who are more powerful than we are, yet interest alone produces our friendship; we do not give our hearts away for the good we wish to do, but for that we expect to receive.

The whimsicalness of our own humor is a thousand times more fickle and unaccountable than what we blame so much in fortune.

It is a species of coquetry to make a parade of never practising it.